Give Yourself the Gift of Music and Dance in Guadalajara
Trilingual ballet and the power of piano in one recital - May 28th, 2025 at Teatro IMSS
In the chaos of relocating from Oaxaca City to Guadalajara more than ten years ago, ballerina Michelle Monet thought she had lost her small but cherished collection of pointe shoes. From her first solo to some of her favorite productions, five pairs of well-worn ballet slippers had always helped her remember her best times on stage.
Monet started dancing “late”, at 10 years old. She was tall for her age, and she was put in a class for six-year-olds.
“It was so embarrassing!” Monet laughs. “And it was really hard.”
But within just a year of practicing and learning alongside the first-graders she towered over, her teachers accelerated her through all the intermediate levels. They saw that her passion and dedication matched her talent. The following year she was assistant-teaching those same first-graders.
“My family didn’t have a lot of money to invest in ballet training,” she remembers. But in the early 90s, she won a full scholarship to the Washington Academy of Performing Arts Dance & Music Summer Camp.
It was the first time she realized, and believed, she was actually good at this, that she could be great if she kept training.
She started studying with Deborah Hadley, a longtime prima ballerina of the Pacific Northwest Ballet Company.
“I love how expressive ballet is,” Monet explains. “It’s not just how the movement of ballet flows, it’s also the athleticism of it. I love the challenge of making perfect angles and the longest lines possible, making something so difficult look so effortless.”
But as a dancer, she always felt she had to push her body to the limits.
In 1995, after only a few months of performing professionally, she was practicing during a group rehearsal when she badly injured her knee.
Athletes were not encouraged to “listen to their bodies” back then. And elite athletes were expected to “push through the pain” to prove their commitment, to defend their spot.
She was in excruciating pain. But she kept dancing.
“I injured the injury,” she explained. “I thought I had to push myself way beyond.”
And, as is the story of too many dancers, she was never able to perform professionally again.
Her injury may have kept her from performing or competing, but it did nothing to diminish her love of the art or her appreciation for the sport of ballet. But fortunately for Monet, dancing ballet isn’t the only way to experience it.
Monet’s life went in a different direction after the injury. She was raising a growing family in her second country, and there were only rare opportunities for dancing. She became a widely respected professional chef and baker — another opportunity to express her boundless creativity.
Almost twenty years after she could no longer perform, Monet’s ballet journey came full circle. In January of 2024, she opened her own ballet school.
After finding an ideal location in Colonia Virreyes, Zapopan, she knew exactly how to renovate the brick-trimmed space overlooking a row of Royal Poinciana trees. Now she’s teaching boys and girls of all ages, and ballet classes for adults.
As a bilingual teacher, she offers classes in English and Spanish. And since the steps are in French, Monet is teaching in three languages during any given class. “I like to explain the meaning of the words so the students understand the intention behind them. And it can sound very similar to words in Spanish, so they make that connection. Or I use rhyming tricks to help remember the meaning. Sometimes it rhymes in English but not in Spanish.” Her students are eager to learn.
She says competitiveness is still, all too often, an undercurrent in the dance world. However, her students are surprising her. She’s been so moved to see these aspiring ballerinas trying to help each other discover their own light, instead of competing to outshine each other.
“Every student has the opportunity to shine,” she continues. “And it’s my job to help them each discover their strength.” She says she tries to take a mental snapshot of that magic moment when her youngest students “get it” and they light up with the realization that they’ve developed a new skill.
“There’s a lot of teamwork happening, too. And I love that. Students are becoming friends with each other. They feel this sense of unity.”
On Saturdays, she teaches advanced ballet to teenagers and adults. They always warm up with rock music. “I want them to be able to find the beat in any genre of music.”
Monet is also seeing dance parents make connections. They have a new bond in common, even if their children may go to different schools.
It’s not just the students who benefit. It’s not just the community that dance creates. The students teach the teacher, too.
“I learn something in every single class,” she emphasizes each word — “every, single, class.”
A few students have already told her that they want to be ballet teachers when they grow up. Not ballerinas, but ballet teachers.
Ballet has changed. Monet pushes her students in a healthier way than she feels the dance industry pushed her in the 90s. She believes that students today are aware of the need to be their own best advocates when it comes to their mental health and physical well-being.
“I want them to be as healthy as possible. I want them to eat enough calories to fuel the intensive cardio we do. And I want them to listen to their bodies, to honor any instinct that tells them to stop when they’re hurt — to prevent injuries from becoming permanent.”
Just before Monet opened the ballet studio, her daughter Grace, a third-year medical student, was visiting her grandmother in Oaxaca City for Christmas. They had lived there for fourteen years before relocating to Guadalajara. When Grace found an unassuming plastic bag in her grandmother’s storage shed she opened it. Inside were old pink pointe shoes well worn from life-changing performances. Grace brought them back to Guadalajara to her mother’s absolute shock.
Monet thought they had been lost all these years. She never expected to see them again. It felt like an auspicious sign.
One of the shoes was signed by the resident dancers of the Mark Morris Dance Company — and by Mark Morris himself (pictured above). She describes him as the Baryshnikov of contemporary dancers, though she laments that her youngest students don’t know who Baryshnikov is. “Yet,” she laughs.
It is a new era. The dancer has begun her new chapter as a teacher in a country she has called home for 25 years.
Her long-lost pointe shoes now decorate the Michelle Monet Ballet Studio in Zapopan as they prepare for Música en Movimiento. The May 28th, 2025 recital will feature MMBS students, Ballet de Jalisco’s Miguel Ángel Martínez, and ballerina María Emilia Cervantes Dworak.
Eduardo Preciado and Juan Pablo Castañeda Smith will accompany the dancers on piano.
If you are in Guadalajara, Mexico, don’t miss this opportunity for the universal art of music and dance at Teatro del IMSS (Teatro Guadalajara Ignacio Lopez Tarso) at 5:30 p.m.